Gun control at the box office: Do stances of Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Willis affect

Gun control at the box office: Do stances of Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Willis affect movie sales?

Snippit:

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis: Three weathered monuments of the blood-drenched action movie genre, three new movies to promote, three different responses to the post-Newtown anti-gun backlash.

In statements to the media, the ex-Governator and the suspiciously ripped Rambo sold out the Second Amendment — despite the fame and fortune each has won wreaking bloody havoc on the big screen wielding the kinds of scary, high-capacity firearms that, yawn, no sportsman needs to fell a deer.

After their comments, both of their (clairvoyantly titled?) new star vehicles — Mr. Schwarzenegger’s “The Last Stand” and Mr. Stallone’s “Bullet to the Head” — promptly tanked at the box office. Coincidence?

But Mr. Willis came out with both guns blazing — Yippie-ki-yay! — in support of Second Amendment rights, while flacking his latest offering, “A Good Day to Die Hard,” which opens Thursday. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the wisecracking, no-bull Mr. Willis calling for gun control with a straight face while hawking tickets to his new nonstop kill ride of a shoot’em-up. Will the hang-tough messaging translate into the kinds of box-office returns that eluded his two rivals?